Foreign Aid Pouring in Resurgent India
In spite of all of the recent news about aid to Pakistan dominating the media, the fact remains that resurgent India has received more foreign aid than any other developing nation since the end of World War II--estimated at almost $100 billion since the beginning of its First Five-Year Plan in 1951. And it continues to receive more foreign aid in spite of impressive economic growth for almost a decade. At the recent G20 meeting, India has asked the World Bank to raise the amount of money India can borrow from the bank for its infrastructure projects, according to Times of India. At present, India can borrow up to $15.5 billion as per the SBL (single borrower limit)in soft loans fixed by the Bank.
After the increase of British aid to $500 million (300 million pounds) a year, India will still remain the biggest recipient of Japan's official development assistance (ODA) in the near future. Since Japan's first ODA to India in 1958, the country has received monetary aid worth Rs 89,500 crore (Rs 895 billion) so far, according to Noro Motoyoshi, Japanese consul general in Kolkata. In 2008, Japan's ODA to India was up by more than 18% compared to 2007 at Rs 6916 crore (Rs 69.16 billion).
Now, there is a BBC report about how India is using some of the British aid amounting to $500 million. It says "Last year Britain gave almost £300m (US$500m) to India in development aid. But India plans to spend more than US$1bn on its space programme next year". Here's the report:
International development aid is one part of the UK budget unlikely to be cut in a squeeze on public finances. But questions are being asked about how aid is used, and which countries need it. India last year got almost £300m from the UK, some of it spent on toilets in the country's financial capital, Mumbai.
The stench from the stagnant, fetid stream of the Queresh Nagar slum in Mumbai hits you as soon as you get out of the car.
The slum itself is bustling and vibrant. There is a line of shops with living quarters above. The stream is behind, the water a murky grey with insects buzzing on top. Some residents have rigged up ****** plastic covers at the back of their homes for privacy. But the children scamper around using the stream, or whatever ground they can find on the disused rail track behind, for a toilet.
"We have to live in these conditions," says La La Nawab Ali, who is showing me around.
"What can we do? You can see the state of it. This is Mumbai."
In another slum at Munjul Nagar, residents show letters, many signed with thumb prints, asking the authorities to finish building a toilet block that has been left half-finished. A similar stench pervades the air.
"It's an extremely difficult and helpless situation," explains Prasad Shetty, an urban planning consultant. "It's an extremely embarrassing undignified demeaning kind of experience for them."
Most of the funding for the sanitation project initially came from the World Bank and was then was taken over by the Mumbai government.
A small amount of British aid goes from the UK Department of International Development (DFID) through charities in England and India, mainly to train people to maintain their community toilet blocks. But many in the slums say they know little or nothing about it.
"You foreign people from over there, you keep on sending so much money," says one angry slum resident. "But the poor person sees nothing."
No water
Central to the scheme is building blocks of public toilets that can be used by the millions of people presently living with no sanitation.
Most of the blocks built so far work, but evaluators say there have been problems with about a third of them. Some have been built with no water supply. Some are not being maintained. One in the Queresh Nagar slum had to be pulled down because it was unsafe. The one in the Munjul Nagar slum has been left half-built because of objections from a developer.
"And somebody even sells the toilets," explained Jockin Arputham, founder of the National Federation of Slum Dwellers. "Sometimes they might have been sold to somebody for a premium."
BBC News - Should the UK fund toilets in Mumbai slums?
Haq's Musings: Foreign Aid Continues to Pour in Resurgent India
Just when one think's that one has seen it all, out comes another first....
I have come across several instances of plagiarism on the internet but this one takes the cake. Here the poster has picked content verbatim from a couple of articles available on the internet, skewed the context in which the original content was intended and voila...... another claim to fame. Just to share with other members on this forum, the following are the links to the articles that the poster keenly rummaged through while conducting his this intensive and exhaustive research on the subject before going ahead and posting this fickle minded creation.
Foreign Aid and India: Financing the Leviathan State
IndiaDaily - India’s double standard on international aid as donor and receiver
And then since the content on the aid part of the post was extremely thin, to spice it up the poster added the BBC article on the inefficient use of aid targeted to the slum development in Mumbai and the Hooorrrrayyyyyysssss are following aplenty.
And after submitting this "work of art" post, the prematurely aged but mentally immature poster would then have wiped his profusely sweating bald pate and rubbed his hands together in enormous delight saying "ab dekhte hain.... mazaa aa jayega...."
Now to the topic:
There are two dimensions to the gratification of needy and friendly (and sometimes also the ones that shamelessly blackmail the world for help in cleaning their self created muck) countries by rich and developed nations.
Thesre are Aids and Grants. Simple english comprehension should be enough to gather the import of these two words and hence the differentiation.
While Grants are non returnable and ex-gratia sort of monetary/non-monetary help, Aid on the other hand is support that comes with obligations of returns. These can be to via soft loans (low interest / waivable interest loans) and also regular loans based on the repayment ability of the country and the willingness of the Donor countries and based on projects = Infrastructure, social development, technological research and educational propagation and sometimes as is the case with Pakistan to build the new GHQ and importing Land cruisers.
These aids / grants are given to the government of the country intended to be benefitted with a faith in the local system (there have been recent exceptions in Pakistan where the donors want to bypass the local government and give aid directly to the Non Government organizations but this is normally almost never occuring and rare instance and happens when the local government has zero credibility).
Grants are also given directly to some NGOs in normal cases also but then that is on extremely project focussed basis and in such cases, the local consulate / embassy of the Donor country plays the role of the auditor to monitor the just use of the grant pledged by the Donor country.
These grants/aids can be monetary or also in material form = For some countries Food, for some countries arms, for some countries via technology, for some countries via other goods , for some countries via oil or in current case of poster's country = all of the above.
Almost always, there are strings and pre-conditions attached to any such move. If lending is from the international financial institutions e.g World Bank, the IMF etc. then monetary accountability is sought to ensure the safety of the donors investment. These are pre-agreed with the accepting country. In most cases, the governments of the accepting countries have fulfilled these obligations as agreed except for a few instances like the recent instance in Pakistan which needed the funds severely as it was about default on its current account payments even as low as 15 days was given the IMF AID even though its credit worthiness was as good as that of a rock in the desert.
However, after Pakistan recieved the first tranche, it back tracked on the agreed mechanisms to be implemented in the economy such as increasing the VAT, curbing local borrowing, increasing electricity and oil tariffs. Increasing other direct and indirect taxation regimes. (Hence the comment of Mrs. Clinton = You have to raise your own taxes now or it will be too late.)
But this is an exception and normally countries never renege on their agreed financial restructuring as committed to the donor organization till the loans are paid back.
The strings could be of humiliating nature too as was in the case of Kerry - Lugar bill which after a lot of "An idea called Pakistan" hoopla the Pakistani state accepted quitely and is now waiting for the disbursement to occur and making rounds of Washington to get this money. This is an example of US using its financial might to influence foreign policy. Normally there are never such humiliating strings attached and it is a friendly load but there is never a free lunch.
So if you discount the 1990s information (hence now at best irrelevant and misleading) that the poster has provided and then account for all the aids / grants that India is extending to African and other countries in Asia in monetary, food and other material forms, one can actually see that the net aid to India is extremely thin.
Aids are not bad, example = Marshal plan for Europe. Aid are also opportunities = refer to the carbon credits that Chinese companies have cashed on the sustainable development scenario so let us not view these as blots. Yes, except for instances when the donor has to tell the accepting country like a teacher scolding a errant child which is morally damaged beyond redemption like in the case of the Poster's country where the only way they can get help is by killing more of their countrymen and serving them on a platter to the donor countries and hence build credibility.
Phew, this one was a long one and it takes time to put the truth in front of friends (remember our teachers taught us that it is easy to live a lie but very difficult to stick to truth). But also in the end one can only so much live a lie till the truth catches up. As is happening painfully in the Poster's country.
But then having read some of the earlier posts of this person, the temptation to skew is beyond redemption as I said above.....
Edit: The following link can provide a little bit of better perspective. The content is pretty level headed and informed.
http://www.planetd.org/2006/09/16/india-aid-recipient-or-donor/
.. Glass half empty vs half full 
